#os design

[kerry7836]

Made a mini figure of Linda. Finally finished sculpting the whole tiny trio! o⁠(⁠(⁠*⁠^⁠▽⁠^⁠*⁠)⁠)⁠o

[thebigg-v3]

MIT 6.004 L17: Virtual Memory

Spring Term 2013 Lecturer: Chris Terman

Great lecture on virtual memory!

[weirdoonthebus]

DWM-Chlorophyll🍃

Customized window manager design using Suckless DWM.

Tiled windows with gaps, translucent Urxvt terminals and a teal+white+green color scheme. Plants, grass, and other nature photos wallpapers cycle on each boot using Feh.

Clone: DWM-Chlorophyll on Github

[alexbuzzbee]

Only my microkernel pals will understand this.

Newbie admin: We don’t need no filesystem!

Newbie admin: *kills fs server*

System monitoring daemon: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE.

[lekardinal-blog]

The two pictures accompanying this post show the Windows XP/7 and the Windows 8.1/10 Blue Screen of Death, the screen that comes up when a user’s computer encounters an error and needs to restart.  

The Windows XP/7 screen (dark blue) seems potentially scarier, with a command line style that is intimidating to the average user.  As a result, the information on the screen, while generally easy to understand and helpful in diagnosing the problem, may serve to instead scare the user into thinking the computer is broken, especially if they have not seen a command line interface before.  Beyond this, the dark blue background is jarring, which only terrorizes the average user even further.

On the other hand, the Windows 8.1/10 blue screen of death (light blue) is much more subdued.  At first glance, the user most likely focuses on the frowny face, which still represents a problem with the computer, but in a much more user-friendly way.  In addition, the new blue screen of death moves away from a command line-like interface, and utilizes a much more readable font and less information in general. This is replaced by a very clear error message, a website link to understand more about the error, and even a QR code for users with a smartphone nearby to quickly link to a relevant website detailing the problems.  These design changes serve to soothe the fears of the average user, while still giving enough relevant information to allow more advanced users to diagnose and fix the problem.

These changes seem very relevant to recent texts, and they are a very common real world example detailing the evolution of a graphical user interface.  This screen’s evolution links to Friedberg’s “The Multiple.”  While the evolution of the blue screen of death does not exactly follow the evolution from a command line interface to a graphical user interface, the new blue screen still borrows many aspects of a graphical user interface that Friedberg details.  For example, the new screen has some images (the frowny face and the QR code) that serves as a layer between the user and the computer itself.  Instead of seeing detailed information about the fatal error and relatively detailed steps to potentially fix the problem, the user only sees that there is a problem and references to potential fixes.  In this sense, the new screen hides a lot of the inner-workings of a computer from the user, expecting the average Windows user to not know (and not care) about the specific details.

I noticed these design changes after I got my new computer, but I did not really think anything of it until I read Friedberg and understood that these changes were intentional and carefully calculated.  It seemed like a good representation of our evolving lifestyle: slowly moving towards a more simplified and automated world where a lot of the work is done under the hood without us having to know anything about it.  Thus, while the Blue Screen of Death is usually seen in a very negative light, I figured its evolution was a pretty cool object to pick apart.

[hammerheadtiger]

This was just a fun mock-up of a operating system designed to be used in peripheral devices complementary to the actual main device. This project sprang from the difficulties in getting the user experience I want from an android TV box. The creatively named Utility OS would be used to unite the interfaces of home automation, remote controls, appliance OS, and other uses, like this TV Interface above. This is obviously not the main design of the OS but a good representation of the overarching theme of Hierarchy. The main flow of information goes from a left to right stream of menus and options. The background of the main screen is populated by available content, from apps to TV shows. The system automatically "Checks in" the viewers from the detected mobile devices in the room and fills the top bar accordingly. Unfortunately, the design does not reach the level of usefulness I expect, because it has been replaced by another design of mine, the remote control system, which replaces these menus with something more intuitive. I admit, Utility OS looks much better in its mobile iteration.